Play-Doh

3/3/11 School Report - Speech: During shelter in place drill downstairs Nikko kept saying "Good job." He did a good job! Speech time - Great job naming home vocab & foods - every time he didn't know one he said "I don't know" & shook his head & LOOKED at me to tell him. We played with the dollhouse and he did nice job moving people around to take bath, walk, watch tv, sleep, eat, go potty.

Today when we went downstairs for a short moment, Nikko came up to me saying, "Bouncy house." I really didn't want to assemble it and then disassemble it in ten minutes so I refused him. Nikko had himself an all-out wail fest. There were lots of tears, too, but I was unwavering. What I did decide, to placate him, was to have the kids play Play-Doh. Audrey and Ronin played it yesterday for a half hour of happiness. So before lunch I set it all up again, this time using the birthday cake play-doh machine properly. It formed little cupcakes that Nikko coveted. Thankfully, he understood that he couldn't take the cupcakes all over the place with him, so when it was clean-up time I opened a sandwich bag and started putting his cupcakes in it. He complied, and to me that was a small battle won.

Right when the boys came home from school and set foot into the kitchen, Nikko was eagerly asking for play-doh. Jovy was going to come over, too, so I knew we would entertain with the clay, but I wanted Nikko to eat snack first. I said, "First snack, then play-doh." Nikko repeated what I said, but he suddenly became very unhappy that he didn't get play-doh first and he again erupted into a wail-fest. Twice in one day is a lot for him! Despite the lure of cheese puffs, the play-doh won out and he wasn't content until I opened that bag of clay cupcakes again. After a half-hour or more, I was able to shuffle him away from the table by turning up WALL-E on the DVD player and enticing him with fun activity with the other kids. Play-doh is fine (or I am learning to accept using it in the house, but my rule is that it stays in the kitchen), but I don't want Nikko's rigidity or novelty want to increase the desire to carry it around like his other toys.